Fall Apart
by Avalon76
Summary: [Loneliness slides into your blood like amber eyes asking, why?]
1. Watching

Fall Apart

By xannychan

Disclaimer: Characters don't belong to me.

Short A/N: I'm not sure why, but an old obsession of mine has recently revived inside of me again, and that would be Beyblade. I haven't even seen it in over three years! But here it is anyway.

Warnings: Angst-ridden Kai and one-sided shounen-ai.

---

When Rei wakes up at six in the morning and notices that there is an empty bed, he wonders how the _hell_ anyone in their right mind could chase the ideals that Kai so adamantly pursues: to be strong, to be smart, to be great, to be _perfect_. He trains through the day into the night. His mind focuses only on the speed, the strength, the defense, the power. He speaks as little as possible—to conserve a wasted breath, perhaps, or maybe just because he didn't like speaking to others besides the Dranzer that rested in his mind.

Sometimes, Rei sees him bandaging his fingers from pulling the ripcord again and again. He skin gets paler these days, and food is becoming a strange substance to him.

But every night, Kai shudders in his sleep.

Once, and only once, Rei saw him crying in his sleep.

The screams never left his mind.

And Rei worries about this. He is worried that his genetically perfect friend (could he really call him that?) is getting sick in the head. He worries that he is pushing too hard. He worries that Kai is doing something to himself that Rei can't stop.

Rei does not like feeling useless.

So when Rei wakes up in the morning, he does not smile and say hello. He touches Kai's shoulder—it gets bonier everyday, he thinks—and waits for him to turn around to face him.

At first Kai didn't even move. But now, he just gives a tired look, as if he is letting him see a weaker side that he would never show anyone else. As if Kai is trying to whisper in his ear something he will never understand. Sometimes, he sees something else in that look and he wonders what it was he wanted to say.

For a while, Rei wanted to know what it was. But from the look on Kai's face, he doesn't even want to think about it.

---

When Kai wakes up at four in the morning, he wonders how he can sleep so peacefully, so easily, for so long. How is heart so strong, so smart, so great, so perfect to allow such a thing? How does Rei slip his hands around what Kai can't even touch? He can give a soft sigh and laugh while Kai doesn't even have the time to breathe. He smiles so easily, and his smile is pulled from his heart.

Kai can't even compare.

Kai trains, day and night, and forgets to eat. He has hardly seen the sun—always training, always perfecting what is _just barely perfect._ It must beautiful, he must _be_ perfect! Black Dranzer tells him so.

Black Dranzer has haunted his mind since the years he thought he had forgotten. But Black Dranzer refuses to be forgotten, and she hushes his raging mind with sweet seductions of perfection if only he sacrifices everything he is, everything he has. Perfection tugs at his soul like a chain that leads a dog, and she holds the leash. When Kai sleeps, she is the sole mistress of his mind. Even in his subconscious nightmare, he barely bites back his tears.

Slowly, slowly, Kai is getting sick in the head with the monster that is slowly eating his soul away. He must be perfect, perfect!

Lately, Black Dranzer has been hissing another name in his ear, another person he must be perfect for.

_Him_.

It makes him shake and his empty stomach lurches when he thinks of him. He pushes harder, chases dreams that get farther every day. Soon, he can't stop himself. He moves mechanically, methodically, slashing and burning his soul and mind away.

Kai doesn't know what he's doing, and he hates it.

At first, Kai doesn't even take notice of the boy that touches his shoulders in the morning. But now, when he looks into the amber eyes he loves, he wishes he could touch him back. But Black Dranzer binds his hands the cord and blade and he fears touching the china face that is _his_.

So he shows him the part of him that he could never dare to show to another, the dying, cracking piece of him that Black Dranzer has not yet stolen from him. He prays that the wind would speak for him, whisper in Rei's mind that Kai is trying to be perfect for him and he's dying for him and deep, deep inside, he's screaming for someone to save him from what he _can never be_ and what Rei has been all along.

From the look on his face, Rei doesn't understand. And when Kai sees that, another part of him falls apart.


	2. Colors

Fall Apart

By xannychan

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.

Short A/N: A lot of people requested that I continue with the story, so…yeah. It's sort of a filler chapter right now, but there's some character development that needs happening. Psychological roller-coasters abound.

Warnings: Non-graphic attempted suicide, one-sided shounen-ai, angst ensues.

---

Men that know darkness don't keep diaries or write journal entries. They don't write their personal sentiments out onto paper for only their own eyes to see.

But they know. They remember. And they do not ever forget.

Kai doesn't keep a diary or write journal entries. He remembers the scars that crawl across his skin and he doesn't forget who put them there.

For that reason, he does not speak, because he is afraid that the memories that swirl across his eyes will become more than nightmares, more than terrors of the night. He is afraid that they will become reality once more.

He is afraid of the scent of blood.

So he closes his mind and he does not scrawl his feelings into words that are worth dirt to him. He does not feel or see or taste or hear or smell anything but sweat and tears of work that bears no meaning.

He focuses and concentrates on things that make no sense.

He trains for reasons that are all his own.

When Rei sees all of this, a cold chill runs up his spine, because he also sees Kai in the hospital bed before him.

---

Kai doesn't know exactly why he did it. It just sort of…happened.

But he remembers _her_ voice, her touch eternally circling around the small of his back in the mockery of comfort, her voice as soothing and sweet as tea and honey scalding the back of his throat.

He remembers white fluorescent lights and the grey walls close to the color of his own skin. He remembers blobs of color—flutters of white ribbons in black hair, the sharp violet hope and dreams curling on the seashell he clasped in his hand, the blue-green of the world above him, the gentle pink of lips screaming his name, the wild gold of panicking eyes, the brilliant, fresh green of his touch—the violent red of the rocks from the cliff he jumped from. They were the color of blood, and the water was metallic on his tongue, and the air smelled of burnt copper.

He remembers other voices, as well, though they were faint and distant, a long time after the cherry and blue colors of emergency faded into mute colors of death.

"He's going to be okay." "I don't know why this would happen…" "Who could do this?"

"He's lucky to be alive."

Phoenixes never die, and for Kai, it is a curse.

---

Everyday, at the precise hour when the sun just touches the horizon, she whispers in his ear gently.

"I didn't choose you so you could run away."

Overhead, the sky turns the color of Rei's hair, as dark as the water he wishes had consumed him.


	3. Realize

**Fall Apart**

By xannychan

Disclaimer: Beyblade does not belong to me.

Short A/N: After a ridiculously long hiatus, here's your third chapter. I had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with this story, since this had originally begun as a one-shot; this project you're reading here is largely experimental. If you have any ideas, feel free to review or PM me whenever.

Warnings: One-sided shounen-ai, angst, and such things follow.

---

Hospital lights have a way of slanting into your eyes, white-hot and cold at the same time. And the people have a way of smiling at you, that slight tilt of their heads that say that they're quite sorry you're sick in the head when they see the bandages running all the way around your torso, blood-stained and stiff. And the cold has a way of crawling up your broken legs through the itch of plaster and layers of white sheets too much like a shroud around a dead body.

The loneliness has a way of sliding into your bones and through your blood, like amber eyes asking you, why? Or like blond hair that's been unwashed for days, or falling asleep in your red sneakers, or glasses flashing in front of laptops for days on end.

Black Dranzer smiles, and Kai can feel it, feel her hand against his cheek, stroking his face, perhaps in twisted affection and sick control and feeling like a slap, like a whip striking the skin that's gotten a little sickly as the days stretched into weeks.

Broken hope has a way of scarring you, like the bruises that bloom everywhere on your skin.

Kai stares at the white tiles, unable to answer their questions, the shadow by the window blocking his view of the sunrise.

Still no one understands the reasons in his eyes, the cloudiness that he doesn't realize are tears until they're streaming down his face.

---

For the first week while he was in the Intensive Care Unit, lost in unconsciousness, they had stayed by his bedside. At least, Rei had. Takao left every once in a while for food and to swallow his nightmares. Max slid out the door when he tried to gulp back his tears. Kenny drifted in and out, researching this and that and burying his face into his hands. But Rei, Rei had stayed right there, watching, waiting, wishing.

He's seen it coming, Rei accuses himself. He should have been ready, should have been there and he wishes more than anything that he could have been a better friend.

A friend that Kai would never have let him be, he adds unconsciously. At this, his mind jars, skids to a halt.

_He has a strange light in his eyes when he looks at you_, the reasonable side of him says. _A strange light that you've never wanted to understand, because there's something in there that scares you…_

His mind keeps reeling. The possibilities, the possibilities, the things he knows are there scare him shitless.

They visit once a week now that he's awake and being guarded. They have gotten a little more forceful with each visit, demanding why? And Kai never answers, just stares.

---

Rei notices, for the first time, that the hospital lights make Kai look like a ghost.

He turns out the lights as he leaves, but doesn't turn around. He doesn't know that, in the dark, Kai looks like man trapped in a nightmare of black fire and unspoken desires.


End file.
